San Francisco, Apr 26 (IANS): After tech billionaire Elon Musk bought Twitter, an old tweet of the Tesla CEO where he had asked about the price of the micro-blogging site five years ago, is being widely circulated on the platform.

In 2017, Musk casually tweeted "I love Twitter". And then a user asked him to buy the micro-blogging platform, to which he replied "How much is it?"

The tweet went viral soon after the news was announced and now has over 1.74 lakh likes and over 35,000 retweets.

"He did it," a user wrote.

As the company's board decided to give in to his takeover bid with his "best and final" offer, the Tesla CEO has finally caught the elusive Twitter bird for $44 billion.

Twitter announced late on Monday that it has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by an entity wholly owned by Musk for $54.20 per share in cash in a transaction valued at nearly $44 billion.

Upon completion of the transaction, Twitter will become a privately-held company.

The purchase price represents a 38 per cent premium to Twitter's closing stock price on April 1, which was the last trading day before Musk disclosed his nearly nine per cent stake in the platform.

Before the official announcement, Musk said that he hopes that his worst critics should remain on Twitter.

"I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter because that is what free speech means," he tweeted.

"And be my love in the rain," he added, posting from famous American poet Robert Frost's poem, 'A Line-storm Song'.